We’re teaming up with some of the most esteemed producers, engineers and mixers in the game who are lifting the hood behind their biggest hits.
In the latest episode of #TheMakingOf, Bainz sat down to chat with us about his creative process by breaking down the mix of T-Shyne – ‘Fighting Demons’ (feat. Young Thug). Bainz broke down some of the workflows and techniques he brings to most of his sessions, as well as what’s unique to this track and how he approaches maximizing what is already great about the track, and how he incorporates so much analog gear into his mixes.
Huge congratulations to Bainz who was nominated for two Grammy Awards at Sunday night’s 65th Annual Awards Show.
Bainz was in contention for ‘Best Rap Performance’ for Gunna & Future ft. Young Thug’s ‘Pushin P’ and ‘Best Rock Album’ for his work on Machine Gun Kelly’s ‘Mainstream Sellout’.
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TRANSCRIPT
My name is BAINZ, we’re at my studio in LA, this is my mix room and we’re going to actually jump into a song called ‘Fighting Demons’. This song has Thug and T-Shyne on it, it was actually on T-Shyne’s album.
I kind of wanted to show you guys the way I work and a couple of the workflow things that I tend to do in most of my sessions.
Alright, let’s dive in. So we’ve got the stems over here, the instrumental stems, and my vocals down here, I have my 808 over here as well, you can see the amount of like automation.
And what that is, is basically it’s to make room for the attack of the kick, the song is very 808 driven, but that kick punches through, I’m just gonna play the section so you can kind of see going into the hook a little bit. The 808 still feels really big. And I kind of tend to push those exciting things.
Let’s jump into the vocals. Because I’m using analogue gear, I have this hidden folder here called printed vocals. And it just shows you that the stuff that I ran, into is not really much it’s committing the autotune, these are multiband, clean-up things, that’s what the Dedger, is the spectral shaper does that, Soothe does that.
Let’s see what’s going on on the hook. This is a little bit of verb under there tucked in with the main vocals, I’m just gonna solo just that section.
In the mix, it doesn’t have to be too crazy, just those couple of things like I want a little more bounce over there. Because I use so much analogue gear on my mix bus and stuff like that I have the software called Session recall. And it’s just an image of my settings that I copy, every time I open up a session that a couple of things I’m using, I can recall them real quick. And this is kind of what it looks like.
So there, I have the Fearn on this makes the VT-5 boosting the highs of there. So I just go, you know, make sure that everything over there matches real quick. And this has been the biggest lifesaver.When you use so much analogue that it adds variables and that you need to take into account and just make sure that you’re on top of that.
A lot of my friends stay in the box and they do it. It helps me get to where I’m going a little faster. And it’s manageable. A lot of the things have hardware recall, and like software’s like this, like I’m not going crazy. The way I’m doing it definitely takes longer, especially when you’re printing stems, but I can hear an audible difference. And that’s enough for me.
LISTENTO just lives on my template, it’s always on, I have it on my Master Tracks. That’s the last thing if I need to check with this 808 that I’m pushing so much it’s going to sound like on a small speaker, I have it right there. And all I got to do is open this up. Lets play it from the hook. Another really cool thing I do is I don’t even need to let it stop playing. I’ve got my air pods right here
And just like that, you know it’s in the headphones. When I’m done with this, I can walk to my car, I put the air pods back on back in their case. Now I’m connected. If we were in my car be connected to my car without even thinking. You know that’s that’s what it is. It’s it’s convenience and ease and just time-saving.
When I got done with this session with T-Shyne’s vocals, I sent him a link and he was at his studio and he was you know, either making revisions or approving it or just listen to it.
You know, they want to be part of the process. There are times when I don’t want to bounce it and send it because I don’t want them to live with it. Because I’m not done yet but I can send them a link. When we got done with the song he was really happy, streamed it live and signed off on it. We just worked really well together.
